It is a growing custom in hospitals, clinics, and the like to provide a disposable sheath to mouth and rectal thermometers that are used with patients. Typically, the thermometer itself is sterilized between uses, but such a disposable sheath provides added protection against the possible spread of disease between the patients by its use.
Various designs of packaged thermometer sheaths are currently commercially available to hospitals and clinics, with each sheath coming in a little flat package, often in strips of packaged sheaths with connecting backings which may be torn apart at perforations.
Some designs of packaged sheaths, for example the SaniTherm sheath, carries a flattened probe sheath between a backing web and an upper web, which webs are peripherally sealed together at side areas. The package is opened by grasping a pair of plastic tabs, each of which is sealed to an opposed side of the open end of the flattened probe sheath, and then pulling away the sheath from the package.
As one disadvantage of this structure, difficulties are encountered in inserting the thermometer into the sheath if one is not careful to properly grasp the tab members. The sheath can otherwise collapse, as one attempts to insert the thermometer, resulting in a waste of time, and sometimes requiring the nurse to get a new packaged sheath and to try again.
On the other hand, the Steritemp packaged sheath manufactured by the Steridyne Corporation requires a rather complex method of opening. First, the thermometer must be inserted into the sheath. Then, one peels back one of the backing sheaths, peeling the other backing sheath, and snapping off an end portion defining the "funnel" of the sheath. Extra flashing portions of surplus plastic material from which the sheath was formed by heat sealing adhere to the backing layers of the sheath package.
In the B-D Temp-Away thermometer sheath, manufactured by Becton Dickinson Company, the packaged sheath is opened by twisting a perforated end portion of the sealed backing webs after insertion of a thermometer between those end portions to enter the sheath. With such twisting, the end portion separates along perforations, and it and the sheath may slide out of the remainder of the peripherally sealed backing webs.
This latter design of packaged sheath is not practically openable by peeling away backing webs, but rather only by the insertion of the thermometer and twisting of the end portion.
In hospitals and clinics, nurses and other practioners who make use of packaged thermometer sheaths become accustomed to opening the sheath in a certain prescribed way, either by twisting the end or by peeling a backing sheet away, depending upon the particular brand of packaged sheath that they customarily use. It has been found that a significant sales resistance can arise among such people to new products which are openable in a way different to that to which they have become accustomed, since the users find it aggravating and time consuming to change their routine in handling packaged sheaths for thermometers and the like.
By this invention, a packaged sheath for a probe is provided which may be opened in more than one way, so that it becomes easily usable by nurses or others who have been trained to open the packaged sheaths by twisting off the end, and also by those who have been trained to use a peel-away or pull-away opening technique. This provides a significant improvement in versatility of the product of this invention.
Additionally, the product of this invention is of efficient, economical construction, since it eliminates a piece part, when compared with the prior art SaniTherm packaged sheath, for a reduction in manufacturing cost. At the same time, the packaged sheath of this invention provides easier insertion of a thermometer or other probe into the sheath, when compared with prior art structures, so that less practice is needed for effective use of the product by untrained people.